Sashank RavindranathDid you know that the chances of you doing business with a shopper is close to 4x more during the holiday season than on regular days?
That means, the holidays are the perfect time for you to make a strong impact on prospective customers and increase sales. But think about this, what if you could do more than just finishing a sale? What if you could improve your retention rates and turn a one-time holiday shopper into a lifetime customer?
Running an online business, you must already be aware of the impact of retention on your profit margins but let me reiterate the fact that increasing retention rates by just 5% can increase your profits by 25-95%.
One of the best ways to retain your customers is to offer them a great customer experience. This can ensure they will be coming back as regular customers, even after holiday sales. However, it is not as easy as it looks. This is because your CX efforts are often hindered by the existing post-purchase gap. And can turn out worse during busy times like the holiday season.
Post-purchase CX Challenges That Can Deter Holiday Shoppers
The control of customer experiences is strong with you until you direct all efforts to make your customers hit ‘buy’. But what happens beyond the buy button?
All of this can lead to severe issues for your business in the form of:
- 10% of all parcels shipped are either delayed, lost, or damaged
- Customers blame and penalize the brand they shop from and NOT the shipping carriers for delivery failures
- 1-in-3 consumers will switch to a competitor after just ONE bad post-purchase experience with a brand
- > 40% of all customer support tickets created are either shipping, delivery, or returns related.
Taking measures to close this post-purchase CX gap will ensure a positive impact on your customers’ lifetime value and the retention rate of your business. Here are the following ways you can adopt to improve your post-purchase CX and turn a one-time holiday shopper into a lifetime customer.
10 Post-purchase Strategies to Turn a Holiday Shopper into a Lifetime Customers
1. Optimize delivery experiences
1.1 Proactively identify and resolve delivery-related issues
Order deliveries during busy times like the holiday season are highly error-prone. Therefore, start monitoring your in-transit parcels in real-time and stay in the know about parcels facing delivery issues. This ensures proactive and faster resolution of delivery-related customer issues and ergo, sets the stage for your holiday shopper to enjoy a great post-purchase experience.
1.2 Reduce customer anxiety with automated shipping notifications
Customers are always anxious regarding their parcel status. This is only worsened during the holiday season. Use this opportunity to turn the tide in your favor and effectively engage with your customers throughout the order delivery lifecycle. Keeping your holiday shoppers informed via timely email and SMS alerts about their delivery status helps you reduce their anxiety levels and revives their trust in your brand.
1.3 Make order tracking self-serve to reduce delivery-related support tickets
Significantly reduce time-consuming (and expensive!) ticket volume raised by anxious holiday shoppers. Enable self-serve order tracking for your holiday shoppers directly from within your website or app. Your support reps will now have time to focus on more pressing issues that could hurt customer satisfaction. Your support reps can also give you a hand on product usage guidance or boosting sales via upselling.
1.4 Offer custom-built branded tracking experiences
To ensure seamless brand experiences in the order delivery phase, start taking complete control over every customer interaction. Offer brand consistent order tracking pages over the dull and off-brand tracking pages provided by the shipping carrier. Such beautiful and branded tracking experiences drive customer delight and keep your brand on the top of the supposedly one-time holiday shopper’s mind.
1.5 Leverage order tracking moments to increase sales and reduce unwanted returns
Make the tracking experience more than just transactional. Run post-purchase marketing campaigns on order tracking pages and double your chances of driving repeat sales. You can also consider featuring relevant product usage information and support channels to reduce the burden of unwanted returns for both holiday shoppers and yourself.
1.6 Get customer feedback around delivery experiences
Capture customer feedback after every order delivery to know how your holiday shoppers feel about their delivery experiences. This can help you understand the detractors of a great CX and make necessary changes to perfect your post-purchase strategy. Also, using this data to consistently direct efforts to improve your CX largely promotes brand credibility.
2. Enhance your returns process to make it hassle-free
2.1 Offer easy-to-initiate returns
The first step to hassle-free returns is to be transparent and establish trust with a clear returns policy. The best ploy is to keep it balanced between being holiday shopper-friendly and meeting your objectives. You can extend your customers’ confidence to keep shopping with you by making returns effortless via fast and easy initiation.
2.2 Communicate throughout every step of the returns process
Similar to deliveries, send proactive updates on returns requests, via automated status notifications and a live returns tracking page. This eliminates customer anxiety and keeps holiday shoppers in the loop of their returns effortlessly.
2.3 Reduce returns by encouraging repeat purchases
70% of all returns are size and fit related — meaning you don’t have to give your holiday shopper a refund for almost three-fourths of returns initiated by them. Get smart by incentivizing customers to opt for exchanges and store credit options rather than refunds. Encouraging your customers to shop with you again instead of cutting them off with refunds helps you retain both holiday shoppers and the revenue they bring in.
3. Keep a close watch on delivery issues
Make sure your deliveries are on-time by keeping a close watch on possible issues during the holiday season. This can help you captivate a regular holiday shopper to spend more with your business in the coming days by reducing their frustrations. Also, this data at hand works as a bonus in evaluating your carriers’ performance and making informed shipping decisions, which can ultimately lead to lower shipping costs during the already expensive holiday season.
Implementing these ways might seem too much to do right before the holiday season. But trust me, they’re not. Delivering these stunning post-purchase experiences for your shoppers ultimately helps you strengthen customer relationships and foster brand loyalty.
And if you’re looking to be an early bird and get this all done even before the holiday shopping season arrives, here comes an all-in-one platform built to deliver phenomenal post-purchase CX and measurable results.
Provide CX Excellence Beyond the Buy Button with Lateshipment.Com
LateShipment.com is the world’s only cloud-based Post-purchase Success platform built to enable retail parcel shippers of all sizes to provide memorable order delivery and returns experiences — besides reducing shipping costs by up to 20%.
- Our feature-packed Delivery Experience Management platform helps improve shipment visibility and drive customer delight post-purchase.
- Our customer-first Returns Experience Management platform makes returns effortless and efficient — all while retaining revenue.
- Our Automated Parcel Audit and Shipping Refunds solution recovers dollars in the refund claims and enables you to make data-backed shipping choices.
LateShipment.com also seamlessly integrates with over 600 shipping carriers and business tools that include E-commerce platforms, Order Management Systems, CRM, and Marketing Automation tools to help you craft delightful post-purchase experiences, at scale.
Bottom Line
Holidays are the time of the year when companies try to maximize their profits from one-time shoppers and gain loyal customers for the rest of the following year. If you play your cards well with your post-purchase at this time, you will be able to increase the satisfaction of your customers and keep them happy with every order.
Which of these ways are you looking forward to implementing for your own online business to turn a holiday shopper into a lifetime customer? Let us know in the comments section!
Meanwhile, feel free to check out LateShipment.com or write to us at sales@lateshipment.com
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